Maya, pp. 600-601

Opening Remarks
With his powerful luminous words Sri Aurobindo dispels the adverse Asuric power of illusion that show us only one side of Reality while covering up the other and most important one.

Veil of the Absolute
But Maya is a veil of the Absolute;
A Truth occult has made this mighty world:
The Eternal’s wisdom and self-knowledge act
In ignorant Mind and in the body’s steps.

Maya is only the power of the Absolute that measures out the Infinite giving it limited finite forms. It is only a cover and a veil of the Absolute that hides the face of Truth. Yet, even behind the veil, it is the Eternal’s wisdom and self-knowledge acts. An intuitive Power acts from behind through the ignorant Mind and can be felt in the body’s reactions and reflexes.

Superconscient’s sleep
The Inconscient is the Superconscient’s sleep.

The Inconscient is nothing else but the Superconscient entering into a state of apparent sleep as if it not aware of Itself. Yet it is there behind and held back by the Darkness.

Unintelligible paradox
An unintelligible Intelligence
Invents creation’s paradox profound;
Spiritual thought is crammed in Matter’s forms,
Unseen it throws out a dumb energy
And works a miracle by a machine.

Creation is a profound paradox. Everything seems like the workings of an Intelligence working from behind through unconscious matter. One can see and feel as if Matter is the expression of a spiritual thought. Unseen it throws out a dumb energy and works out a miracle through a machine.

Mysteries of contraries
All here is a mystery of contraries:
Darkness a magic of self-hidden Light,
Suffering some secret rapture’s tragic mask
And death an instrument of perpetual life.

All here is a mystery of contraries. There is no original darkness but only a self-concealment of the Light. Suffering is simply a tragic mask worn by some secret rapture whose face we are yet to see. Death itself is an instrument of life ever renewing itself.

Death is a stair
Although Death walks beside us on Life’s road,
A dim bystander at the body’s start
And a last judgment on man’s futile works,
Other is the riddle of its ambiguous face:
Death is a stair, a door, a stumbling stride
The soul must take to cross from birth to birth,
A grey defeat pregnant with victory,
A whip to lash us towards our deathless state.

From birth to death we live in the shadows of Death. It walks by our side at every step and in the end seems to win the race. But the truth behind this riddle is that actually Death is not an end but a stair, a door, a stumbling stride that the soul takes to pass from life to life, from birth to birth. It seems a defeat but each such defeat prepares the soul for a greater victory. Often it acts like a whip to lash us towards our deathless state.

Shadow of eternal Day
The inconscient world is the spirit’s self-made room,
Eternal Night shadow of eternal Day.

There is no original Night. It is only a veil or a shadow or a self-concealment of the Light. The Inconscient is the room built by the Spirit where it has gone to sleep and out of Its sleep creation emerges.

The dark womb
Night is not our beginning nor our end;
She is the dark Mother in whose womb we have hid
Safe from too swift a waking to world-pain.

Night is the dark Mother’s womb that prevents us from swift awakening to world-pain.

By Light we live
We came to her from a supernal Light,
By Light we live and to the Light we go.

Our souls have come into the womb of darkness from a supernal Light. We live by Light and to the Light we go.

Closing Remarks
Night is a shadow and not some original Truth. That is why it has not the ultimate absolute Power. It can cover the soul’s vision for some time but cannot blind it forever.